


Love Is a Crime

by QuillerQueen



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Historical, Chicago AU, F/M, Happy Ending, OQ Happy Ending Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillerQueen/pseuds/QuillerQueen
Summary: Regina Mills is a vaudeville performer locked up for double murder. Robin Locksley is the celebrity attorney in charge of defending her. Neither of them expects to hear from the other after trial is over, but perhaps there's more between them than bickering and a soulless business transaction after all...





	Love Is a Crime

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited because I ran out of time. They were also giving me trouble by insisting on being softer than I intended for them to be, those stubborn soulmates. Title shamelessly borrowed from Anastacia's song of the same name.

The circus is almost over.

The jury have sequestered themselves to vote. The courtroom is abuzz with reporters, shutters clicking away, questions raining down upon Regina’s head. Not that she’s allowed to respond. Oh no—that task is reserved for her aggravating attorney.

Robin Locksley basks in all the attention, flashing that dashing, dimpled smile left and right. He loves the limelight, has certainly enjoyed at least as much popularity during his stellar legal career as she has on the stage. His work involves about as much acting, and decidedly more accolades. He knows his tricks, from manipulating facts and public opinion to falsifying evidence, just as well as she’s adept at jazz walk, backflips, and pirouettes.

He’s been useful, she’ll give him that—the only thing standing between her and death row. Not that he hasn’t been paid handsomely. Robin Locksley doesn’t do charity. Instead he seeks fortune, and perhaps more importantly fame, that flighty temptress; if he can’t have that, he’ll make do with infamy. They’re similar in that—anything over anonymity, over being invisible in a cold, indifferent world.

That’s where their similarities end though. Because Robin Locksley is a pompous jerk, brazen and cocksure, ensnaring woman after woman with his stupid boyish grin and smug smirk and irritating accent, preying on the weak and consorting with the wicked. Always dapper in an expensive suit, well-groomed and pampered by hired hands, pestering the world with witticisms and Regina with incessant instructions posing as advice.

And he’s been right every damn time—which has only served to make him more smug, more insufferable.

Damn him, and damn the exorbitant sum of money she’s paying him to exonerate her from the crime she wishes she’d committed years ago. Damn her drained bank account if it can buy her an existence without tyrannical husbands and treacherous sisters. It’s practically robbery, but she’ll swallow it. Whatever it takes for this celebrity lawyer to get her off.

If his reputation is to be believed, he’s at least as good at that as the other kind of getting her off she’s occasionally enjoyed during the course of their business relationship. Strictly business. Strictly physical. Any sign of empathy or care between them has been either a figment of her imagination or a thinly veiled manoeuver. He knows it. She sure as hell knows it. It’s the way of the world.

Anyway, Regina’s not going to have to endure Robin Locksley much longer. The jurors, twelve angry men her fate depends on (why is it always men, she wonders bitterly), file in and take their seats, ready to return the verdict—life or death for Regina Mills, murderess and fleeting media sensation.

Locksley stands by her side, his hand briefly brushing hers, and it would almost be reassuring if it were even the slightest bit real and not part of a charade.

One way or another, it’s coming to an end—a spectacular act about to reach its grand finale. 

And then—one way or another—freedom awaits.

* * *

It’s weeks before he tracks her down, and in truth it’s she who finds him in the end, big red letters spelling her name and Mal Wyrme’s on the brightly lit marquee of Chicago Theater. Robin smirks—it’s just like Regina to mock him so for his futile efforts.

The act is splendid, equal parts artistry, steamy allure, and slapstick comedy. He sits towards the front and claps furiously, but his mind isn’t on the dancing or the more macabre elements so marketable to the masses.

They parted ways week before without a word of goodbye as he chased another lucrative case. Robin had been to many a club in his life, but never had he been so meticulous about combing the whole of the Windy City in search of a specific act as the week after their ways had parted. A specific performer. Currently jobless, no doubt, or else it’d have made the front page already. She’d be a sensation. She’d deserve it, too—has the talent, the passion, the smarts to be successful.

It’s the way of the world that life is rarely fair.

He himself, despite his profession, has done precious little to make it fairer.

Yet he’s hoping to steal a little happiness for himself. More than a little happiness, if luck would have it. If she’ll have him.

Her dressing room is teeming with admirers, so he stations himself at the back entrance, waiting for a glimpse of her. It’s raining, and he’s no umbrella, no shelter, standing there drenched like a dog by the time she finally emerges.

No longer in her sequined costume, she manages to be more dazzling than ever in her fur-trimmed coat, and his heart knocks desperately in his chest, yanking him forward. 

She freezes when she sees him, a hand flying to her stomach before she tucks it in her pocket. He berated her for the gesture many a time, insisting she get rid of the tell in court because she couldn’t afford to give away when she felt vulnerable.

“Don’t you have somewhere more pleasant to be?” she challenges.

God, he’s missed her.

“The weather’s been most averse to my plan, but I’m glad I persevered.”

“Aren’t you the romantic hero,” she claps back, and Robin can’t help chuckling. He wouldn’t have expected any less than the snarky, cynical remark the situation seemed to beg.

“Perhaps I could walk you home?” It’s far less smooth than ideal, but she seems to rob him of all thought, so it’ll have to do.

“A poor pretext on which to use my umbrella. Seems beneath you.”

“It’s not the umbrella I care about.”

“You don’t care about much.”

It’s unexpected, the way it lands like a slap to his cheek. It’s true enough, and at the same time no longer so.

“No, admittedly I don’t,” he shrugs. Hopefully his well-trained poker face holds—he’s not ready to relinquish that just yet. “Or haven’t. Not until recently, that is.”

Regina raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

“Is this a proposition?” Her fingers curl tighter around the shiny handle of her umbrella. “Ours was a one-time deal, Robin. A few rough fucks with one of your many defendants.”

“You’re making me sound like a bigger tosser than I’d like to believe I am. I was under the impression that you initiated those pleasant encounters.”

“I did, and you abused your position no more than usual—at least not by having sex with me.”

“Regina—”

“I’m not interested in an affair.”

“I had something else in mind, actually.”

“Oh?”

“I know our days were spent in borderline adversity,” he begins—and falters pathetically. He’s speechless. He’s never speechless. Words are the tool of his trade, and he wields them with dexterity and finesse. A bumbling confession is the last thing anyone’d ever expect of him, and yet… It’ his only chance though, so he blunders on like the lovesick idiot he resigns himself to being. “But there were moments—when you fell asleep rehearsing your speech and I woke you from a nightmare, or when our usual bickering led to a series of very delicate, very personal revelations about our less-than-perfect families. We downplayed it at the time, but—”

“Stop right there.” Her hand emerges from the pocket again, palm in his face as she literally holds him at arm’s length, eyes hard and unforgiving, accusing even. “Even if there were some mysterious connection between us—and I’m not saying there is—I seem to remember we both agreed such pipedreams aren’t worth exploring. It’s one of the very few things we agreed on,” she adds with a smirk that doesn’t reach her eyes.

His stomach does all manner of ridiculous things, sinking and twisting and knotting a dozen times over.

“Would you at least let me plead my case?”

“Love is the only crime you can’t afford. Your words,” she reminds him. Perhaps he’s imagining the pained edge to her words, but he rather selfishly wishes it weren’t so.

“Crime, weakness… They’re merely excuses of cowards unwilling to risk their hearts. If love is indeed a crime, well—” It goes against every habit he’s constrained his heart and gut into in the past decades, but it’s now or never, and there’s nothing for it but to take the plunge. “—then I’ll gladly do my time.”

She regards him for a moment that seems endless. They’d do this sometimes, try to penetrate each other’s carefully crafted masks and get to the naked truth underneath. He used to find it annoying or amusing, depending on the situation. Now it’s just unnerving.

“Just how much time are we talking?”

Relief washes over him, and the rush of adrenalin has him stepping in close just as she propels her body towards him in turn. Their lips crash together in a bruising kiss, twin groans escaping them as they grab onto each other with urgency, nipping and biting. It used to be rough and hurried between them, but never quite this desperate—never as gentle before as the kiss winds down, tongues exploring languidly, and that’s new, and frightening, and above all intoxicating.

“Sentence me to life,” he rasps, and she laughs—a breathy little thing unlike anything he’s heard from her before, and he wants to hear it again, and again for as long as he lives—before kissing him once more as the umbrella rolls forgotten on the pavement.


End file.
